Mist of Shadows
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Travels in the Multiverse Part 11
🕑 Added 2020-10-03 06:34:18 +0000 UTCMyst felt the impact on his force field as a massive blast of kinetic energy hit his shield from behind and sent him flying through the air. He had just enough time to watch the blast break as it struck the massive lion and army of human-like animals before he hit the ground and had the wind knocked out of him, losing his hat and sunglasses in the process.
Buffy rolled with the motion, cartwheeled and flipped around to look at the red eyed bastard that Myst had been so worried about, which is why she saw the massive lion clear the distance in a blur and disembowel the man with one swipe of his massive claws and then effortlessly crush his head in his jaws before he could even bleed out. "Nice kitty?" she nervously offered as the lion spit out the man's head then turned to look at them, blood dripping from the sparkling white scimitars he called teeth.
Myst pulled in a gasp of air, his regeneration already working to 'fix' things as he staggered to his feet. "Sorry about dropping in," he offered as he stumbled a couple of steps closer to Buffy who was backing up, not sure why his precog wasn't screaming. 'Maybe it's broken or hiding under the sofa in terror, yeah, that makes sense,' he mused, feeling ice running down his spine as he got close enough to grab Buffy and jump worlds, wanting nothing to do with something that could casually kill the man that had hunted down and all but murdered the Traveler.
Buffy stumbled forward as they found themselves on an unfamiliar bridge with familiar looking Star Trek uniforms. "Was that?"
"No idea-" Myst stopped what he was going to say and brought up his force field when his precog screamed at him, informing him that the phasers most certainly weren't set to stun and that they were going to shoot them repeatedly. "Look out!" he shouted as he tossed himself to the ground a second before several people shot at him, causing the beams to twist and warp but still punch through the area he'd been in.
Buffy cleared the distance to the closest person shooting at her, stole his weapon and shot him figuring the phasers were set to stun and she really didn’t trust herself to punch him when she was pissed off at being shot at! She was more than a little horrified when the beam burned right through the man's shoulder and struck the wall, causing a console to explode and tossing one of the crew to the ground with some nasty burns.
Myst used telekinesis to rip the phasers away from the rest of the crew as he hit his bracelet to bring up the interdiction field so they couldn't just transport them into space or a holding cell. "Calm the fuck down!" he snapped as he scanned the captain's mind, trying to figure how he'd ended up in the Mirror Universe. "Oh, fuck," he muttered as he realized exactly where he was.
Buffy pulled her attention off the man that she'd probably just killed when one of them charged her and tried to hit her with his fist, everyone moving like snails compared to her usual opponents. She carefully punched him in the solar plexus and shoved him into the guy running at Myst.
Myst pulled his crystal wand out of his pocket and proceeded to hit each of the five conscious crew members with a stunner. "That could have gone better."
Buffy stared at the unconscious men for a second then looked at the man she'd probably accidentally killed. "Can you heal him?!" she begged.
"No real point, we're on the Equinox, but sure," Myst grumbled as he walked over and lent the man his regeneration long enough to make sure he wasn't going to die from shock then walked over and started healing the crew member that had been knocked unconscious by the screens exploding. "It's like they're trying to get people killed."
"Are we in Star Trek?" Buffy asked, just to be sure.
"At least a version of it," Myst replied as he glanced at the console on the wall showing what he was guessing was the heading.
"Why did they have their phasers set to kill?" Buffy demanded, having caught some of the Next Generation episodes with her sister when they were younger.
"The crew has been killing a bunch of peaceful and sapient aliens to boost their warp drive in a futile attempt to reach Earth, the aliens are a bit pissed to say the least," Myst explained as he glanced at the console on the wall. "This would be easier if the console was in English."
"I'm pretty sure it's just in geek, we need Willow or Xander," Buffy suggested.
"Probably," Myst replied as he stood up and walked over to one of the consoles and tapped into the computer with his technopathy, locking all of the crew out of their various systems and reassigning himself as Captain.
"Are we going to talk about the lion?" Buffy asked, not quite sure what she had felt in its presence besides pants wetting terror, but it certainly wasn’t demonic.
"I wasn't planning on it," Myst muttered as he tapped his bracelet to turn the interdiction field off then used the ship's transporters to transport all of the injured to sickbay and the rest to the brig. Only the fact that they were down to a little less than a third of their original crew made it possible to fit them all in there.
"So… the guy chasing us is dead, right?" Buffy asked hopefully.
"Probably," Myst acknowledged, his emotions a mix of relief and unease as he was once again reminded that jumping between worlds was dangerous. He pulled his attention away from his contrasting thoughts of the incredible risks he was taking making blind jumps vs delight that the bastard was dead and focused on his traveling power, hoping that he didn't send them somewhere completely horrible.
Buffy jumped when the ship shook like an airplane going through turbulence. "What was that?"
"That would be the pissed off aliens," Myst replied as he ripped a massive portal open in front of the ship to somewhere else, somewhere they could hopefully use an extra ship because the Equinox was doomed if he left it and he didn't see a reason to let a good ship go to waste when it was the crew that had failed it.
Buffy stared at the view screen as a blue portal appeared on the screen. "I feel like someone should be shouting red alert or something, isn't that what they always do when they see an unidentified anomaly?"
"Rarely, but it's been years so I could be remembering the show wrong," Myst admitted as the ship went through the portal and into a field of disturbingly decorated ships.
Buffy stared at the view screen in horror. "Why are there people chained to the outside of those ships?"
"Reavers…" he trailed off as he realized he was on a Federation ship and had nothing to worry about from weapons that probably couldn't even get through their low powered debris shields let alone their main deflector shields. He mentally closed the portal behind him hoping no aliens managed to follow him and had the computer start scanning the local area to make sure of that as well as to see what was in the space around them.
After a single second of thought he also had the computer start building a database on the local tech and ordered the transporter to beam the Reavers into space. Sure it was not exactly ‘nice’ or ‘good’ by most people’s metrics but as far as Myst was concerned insane cannibals should be disposed of before they manage to start up their chainsaws and chase you around discussing your current dinner reservations.
"What are Reavers?" Buffy asked, wanting to know why he sounded so horrified and hoping they were something she could punch or stab, as she was feeling really out of her depth and had been since Glory had shown up much less Mr. My-head-can-be-used-as-a-nightlight-and-I-have-a-nice-ass-and-give-you-lots-of-shiny-things-while teleporting-you-all-over-the-whole-of-creation... ‘I really should shorten that a bit,’ she thought to herself, the unreality of the situation making her feel kind of numb.
"They're basically humans that reverted to a primal rage state, they show up on planets and kill, rape, and eat people and if they're lucky, do it in that order," Myst explained as he continued transporting them into space, checking everything twice to make sure he wasn't transporting anyone off a Firefly class ship until he made sure it wasn't Mal's team. “They can’t speak or write, and are barely more than animals and there is no chance of rehabilitating them as the sections of the brain dealing with logic and reason are gone.”
"How the hell are they still alive and flying spaceships?" Buffy demanded.
"Officially, they don't exist, unofficially, the nominal leaders of the system don't want to deal with them because they're keeping people away from Miranda." Myst gestured as he brought up an image of the closest planet. “As to how they can fly ships they have punched holes in and decorated with corpses… not a clue one. Voodoo maybe?”
Buffy shook her head. "What's so important about the planet that they're willing to allow... space zombies?"
"The Core, which is the local government for this star system, tested a population control drug on the planet called The Pax, it was supposed to reduce aggression and it did, only too well. Of course they had never tried releasing it in open air much less gassing an entire panet so they screwed up the dosage and everyone that was dosed basically stopped doing anything and simply laid down… and died, either of starvation or because their hearts stopped. Or at least 99% of the population did, the other one percent went completely batshit insane with rage and turned into Reavers."
"They wiped out an entire planet and haven't killed the zombies because they're helping hide their mistakes?" Buffy asked, trying to wrap her brain around that level of insanity.
"Basically. The rest of the system alternates between highly advanced cities under the authority of the system’s central government to the border worlds where it's basically like the wild west, only in space," he explained as he poked at the ship’s medical hologram’s programming, which the crew had removed all ethics subroutines from for some reason that only made sense to them.
"Let me guess, another show?" Buffy asked.
"Yep," Myst replied absently as he purged the Doctor's current programming from the computer, saving the medical advances in separate files, unwilling to waste the knowledge they'd accumulated. "Unfortunately for the Reavers, they don't have a hope in hell of getting through our shields."
"You couldn't have started with that?" Buffy asked, giving him a dry look.
Myst shrugged. "I was a bit distracted talking to the ship."
"Talking to the ship?" Buffy asked.
"One of the abilities I picked up is technopathy, it means I can communicate and control machines as long as they're close enough," Myst replied.
"That's useful. What are we going to do with the crew?" Buffy asked, trying to focus on something other than the ships floating all around them, covered in half eaten corpses.
Myst scanned the ship graveyard again then dropped the main shields when he didn't find any living Reavers, telling the computer to raise the main shields and alert him if anything dangerous headed their way. "I'll probably stun them and toss them through a portal to their version of Earth."
"Shouldn't you turn them into Starfleet Command or something?" Buffy asked.
"Probably, but they were already put through hell and I'm fairly sure Starfleet would send everyone to a prison colony somewhere and lose the records just to hide what happened, regardless of whether the individuals involved actually had a say in what was going on," Myst grumbled as he pointed his wand at the console. "Repair."
Buffy smiled as the console repaired itself, coming back to life. "That would have been so useful in school… or at home… or anywhere really. Things tend to get broken a lot around me.”
"Yep," Myst replied as he put his back in his pocket. "To answer your unasked question, I'm unwilling to dig through the crew's heads to see how many of them were actually guilty."
"It still feels like they're getting off easy," Buffy grumbled.
"Probably, but I doubt any of them will ever willingly set foot on a ship again or even continue working for Starfleet. Not to mention Starfleet has enough telepaths running around that the guilty ones will probably get discovered and sent to prison anyways." Myst set the computer to analyzing the computers on the Reaver ships to try and figure out how to communicate with the locals. "Are we ready to deal with the crew?"
"What are you planning on telling them?" Buffy asked.
Myst smirked. "Just that I'm Captain Jack Sparrow and I'm stealing their ship."
"Who?" Buffy asked.
Myst sighed as he realized the movies hadn't come out yet in her world. "Never mind, we're going to have to have a movie night."
"I wouldn't mind," Buffy admitted, knowing she needed to decompress before she took a long walk off a short pier or... jumped off a tower into a portal because she couldn't see a better way. "I haven't exactly had enough time to do much of anything lately other than worry about Glory."
"I can sort of relate, I went from being a normal person to having to worry about a dimension jumping warlock killing me because I won the cosmic lottery and ended up with the powers and abilities he wanted to steal. It's a bit disconcerting."
Buffy snorted. "Try finding out you're supposed to save the world."
"At least you don't have to save an ungrateful wizarding world," Myst pointed out.
"Yeah, I think I'd move to America if I was Harry," Buffy admitted as she walked over and sat down in the captain's chair. "This seat is actually surprisingly comfortable."
Myst laughed. "Have fun playing captain. I need to go toss some rats off my boat."
"Better you than me," Buffy replied as she leaned back and closed her eyes, taking the chance to relax now that they weren't worried about getting jumped. While she’d had some of her enemies come back from the dead before she’d yet to see one come back from a lion.
Myst mentally pulled up the video feed of the brig and teleported down to it.
"What are you?!" one of the crew blurted when he noticed the runes floating over his head and his glowing purple eyes.
"You've heard of the Q, right?" Myst smirked when the man's face went pale along with several other members of the crew he'd packed into the cell. "I see you have. I normally don't interfere, but your actions are screwing up the ecology of a dimension I quite enjoy listening to and causing waves so I've been assigned to deal with you."
"We just want to go home," one of the other crew members blurted out, near tears.
Myst glared at the man whining about going home. "And the countless sapient lifeforms you murdered to get closer to Earth just wanted to live, but we can't have everything now can we Mr Osban?"
Jerald Osban gulped as it sunk in just how screwed they were, and wondered if there was some new level of hell for them to sink to after watching his friends and shipmates being chewed up by the Delta quadrant, dying one by one or sometimes in groups… and worse still, sometimes by inches.
"You have no idea," Myst replied with a smirk as he opened a portal along the wall of the cell. "But in this case, you're going to get your wish."
"What is that?" one of the crew stared at the portal as he tried to take a step back, backing into the people behind him.
"That is a portal to Earth," Myst explained, taking a bit more pleasure in messing with the bastard than he should.
One of them jumped through the portal without a single look back.
"What's the catch?" one of the other crew asked, confused as everything in the Delta quadrant had cost them something, blood, friends, morals, possibly their very souls and sanity.
"There's no catch, strings or games, I just don't want to fill out another 153537Qr form if I don't have to," Myst grumbled.
"153537Qr?" one of the crew asked.
"I have to fill it out every time I disassemble sentient lifeforms in excess of 20 kilos," he grumbled.
"You can't just kill us!" one of the men argued.
"I think you're confusing can't with shouldn't, such a vague language," Myst mused. "You can't just kill hundreds of sapient beings so your ship can go an insignificant amount faster, oh wait, you did. Look, I understand, you're horrible people that wanted to get home and you betrayed the people that kept you from starving to death by murdering their friends, but the paperwork is annoying, so step through the portal and I can get back to my vacation or don't and I have to deal with more paperwork."
He wasn't terribly surprised when most of the people quickly jumped through the portal. He turned to look at the only person that hadn't stepped through the portal.
"Can I get my keepsakes?" the woman asked hopefully.
Myst caught the woman's thoughts about her dead husband's flute and about how she hadn't known anything about the aliens. He used the transporter and the ship’s internal sensors to transport her stuff to the brig at her feet. "Sometimes the only thing you can do is survive to bear witness. Don't lose your heart over things you can't change, Sandy."
"I'll try." Sandy picked up her things and walked through the portal, feeling better than she'd felt since finding herself in the Delta Quadrant.
Myst closed the portal then opened portals for the other cells, wanting them off his ship and out of his hair. 'I almost want to ask the captain what their end strategy was; they had to know the device merely called the aliens.' He shook his head and closed the portals after the last crew member went through then teleported to sickbay and tossed the injured people through the portal after healing them enough that they probably wouldn't die. 'Better than they deserve.'
His thoughts were pulled away from the crew when the ship detected a Firefly class ship heading towards the planet. "Sweet." He sent a communication request, figuring it would take them a minute or two to respond. He pulled the basket of odds and ends he got from the magic shop out of his pocket dimension and slipped the disguise ring on, not seeing a reason to freak the crew out. He put the basket back then teleported to the bridge and put the ship up on the view screen. "Sweet Serenity."
Buffy glanced at Myst. "Isn’t that a Reaver ship?"
"No, they just strapped some Reavers to the hull to make it look like it, desperate times and all of that," Myst muttered.
"I guess that's one way to do it," Buffy said thoughtfully, wondering if the same thing would work with certain types of demons then shook her head.
"Say, how do you feel about professional massages?" Myst asked, thinking about Inara.
"I haven’t had one in years," Buffy admitted with a sigh, thinking about the various times she'd heard Cordelia bragging about going to a spa. "Why?"
"One of the crew is an expert," Myst replied, thinking of Inara.
"Are they going to get handsy?" Buffy asked warily.
"She's a professional, just tell her what you want," Myst said, fairly sure he could bribe Inara into helping Buffy relax and maybe even listen to her concerns without judging. He grinned when the screen changed to show Wash, Zoe, and Mal sitting in a familiar cockpit, looking enough like their actors they could be mistaken for siblings. "Welcome to Miranda airspace, population us."
"Who are you?" Mal asked, more than a little cautious about the strange ship that looked nothing like any of the ships he'd heard of and was at least three times the size of the Serenity.
"My name is Myst and this is Buffy, we saw you sneaking through Reaver space and thought we'd let you know that all the Reavers in the area are dead," Myst said cheerfully.
"How?" Wash asked warily.
"To quote a young lady, ‘I killed them with my mind," Myst replied, knowing he shouldn't be messing with the team but unable to resist having a little bit of fun, even if he had mangled the quote.
Buffy sighed softly. 'Yeah, he's worse than Xander.'
Mal snorted. "Did you want something?"
"That depends, my friend could really use a massage and to talk about women’s things, is Inara taking clients?" Myst asked, trying not to laugh at the relieved look on Mal's face.
"We're sort of on a mission," Zoe said, not really objecting to work, just focused on finishing what they'd started.
"I know, you're looking into Miranda," Myst replied.
"What makes you think that?" Wash asked, wondering if it was too late to run.
"Besides the fact that we’re in orbit around Miranda?" Myst asked with amusement.
"Are you going to stop us?" Mal asked, wondering how they were connected to the Alliance government.
Myst shrugged. "No, but I'm curious, is doing the right thing worth the Alliance bringing down all of the fire in the verse on you and yours?" he asked, wanting to make sure they had the same strength of character the actors had shown on screen.
"Sometimes, it's the only thing you can do," Mal replied, thinking about the Battle of Serenity and all the people they’d lost.
"In that case, best of luck with your salvage mission. Do you want a piece of advice?" Myst asked, fairly sure they didn't have a chance in hell of getting the message out since he'd already killed the Reavers in the area which meant the crew couldn't use the Reavers against the Alliance.
"What's that?" Zoe asked.
"The Alliance has probably already killed Mr. Universe, which means you should avoid going anywhere near him," Myst warned them, fairly sure he'd be dead before the team could get to him, even if he wasn't dead at the moment.
Mal winced, knowing it was quite possible that the operative had already reached him. "Are you part of the Alliance?"
"No, I'm just a traveler that wants to claim an abandoned planet," Myst replied.
"Honey, we talked about this, do you really need another one?" Buffy asked, deciding to play along with whatever insanity he had planned.
Myst mock pouted. "It's a perfectly useful world and it's just sitting there."
"You want to claim it?" Zoe asked in surprise.
Myst shrugged. "It's not like the Alliance have much of a claim anymore, considering they scrubbed it from the records and left it to the Reapers after they murdered everyone."
"What happened?" Zoe asked.
"It's better that you see for yourself, words don't really do it justice." Myst was rather relieved that he couldn't pick up psychic impressions from objects or he'd have already jumped worlds rather than risk being anywhere near the planet. "Once you've seen what they did, I'd like to see if I can interest you in a job."
"What type of job and what are you offering?" Mal asked, knowing they needed supplies if they were going to finish what they’d set out to do.
"I'd like to borrow your mechanic for a couple of days and talk to Inara about a couple of days' work as a massage specialist and therapist for my friend. I can pay a decent amount of platinum coins and give you a place to rest up for a couple of days before you decide what to do with the information you'll learn on Miranda. I'm also willing to help with parts and repairs."
Mal shook his head. "You have a fancy ship, what do you need us for?"
"I'm reasonably sure Kaylee is psychic when it comes to machines, Wash is a damned fine pilot, Jayne is a decent punching bag and Zoe can slap you upside the head and keep you reasonable."
"Hey," Mal complained.
"He's not wrong, Sir," Zoe said, trying not to smile.
"Fine, we'll consider it," Mal admitted, fairly sure they wouldn't need to resort to tricks if they meant them ill. "We'll have to talk it over."
"By all means, call us back when you get done with Miranda," Myst suggested.
"Will do," Zoe replied then ended the call. "Thoughts?"
"No mention of the Doctor or River, but if they know about the rest of us…" Zoe trailed off.
"Then they probably know about River and the Doc," Mal agreed. “That little ‘kill you with my mind’ comment was kinda a big clue.”
"We could use fuel and repairs, we're barely hanging in here," Wash pointed out.
"Can we trust them?" Mal asked.
"None of the Reavers have changed course other than to stop and power down since we got here, meaning he was probably telling the truth about dealing with them, if they mean us harm, we're already screwed," Wash pointed out.
"Fine," Mal grumbled, not seeing a better option as they could use the money, repairs, and supplies.
"I'll talk to Inara," Zoe said, figuring Mal would just stick his foot in his mouth again.
"I'll let the Doc know we might have some paying work for him," Mal said as he left the cockpit.
"I'll take us down, hopefully in one piece," Wash said as he focused on getting down to the surface safely, despite the recent… tics the right stabilizer was developing.
Comments
Robert Buniff
Ok now I can't wait for the next chapter.
